Justice Rings
by ShouldiWonder
Summary: There's a place in some distant woods where an entire world was carved from humanity's paranoia.  Only, no one has seen it and no one has looked for surely, somewhere, it's carver stays awaiting for someone to dare glance at his masterpiece.  Surely.


**Justice Rings**  
><strong>(And Screams, and Screams, and Screams)<br>(Summary:** _There's a place in some distant woods where an entire world was carved from humanity's paranoia. Only, no one has seen it and no one has looked for surely, somewhere, it's carver stays awaiting for someone to dare glance at his masterpiece. Surely._**)**  
><em>Merlin BBC. Merlin Emrys. MerlinArthur. MerlinMorgana friendship._

There's a line. It's drawn deep into the Earth and can never be hidden or erased. It's a line that humanity carved into themselves. Every person reasoned it made them different and made others even more so. It separated them all until the Earth was nothing but a jagged, dysfunctional machine that pulsed and thrived to an uneven beat. And yet-

(And yet they ignored it.)

-

Being hated for something uncontrollable isn't something to get over, not really. It leaves Merlin feeling uneven, two inches to the left instead of to the right, under his skin sickness, in his head madness, uneven.

-

It all goes too fast and too slow and maybe it hadn't even happened at all. Merlin has relived it so often that the memory becomes frayed around the edges until it almost completely fades. Had it been raining or was the sun shining? Had Arthur's shirt been red or blue? Had Gwaine told him a joke that morning, right before, or had he even seen him at all? All he knows is that Arthur would have died and maybe Merlin too, or not maybe, because he knows that he would have died if Arthur had too, that's how failed destiny works, right? Or was that in a storybook? Arthur was going to die and Merlin's magic reacted before he could, had bubbled in his veins and surged pass his lips and flared in his eyes.

(In the end Arthur had looked so angry and so, _so_ sad.)

-

Morgana's favorite word is _prejudice. _He has known this for all of a year, yet only knows it through assumptions. She whispers it, sometimes, under her breath and in his mind like she doesn't realize that she is. She likes ripping apart the sounds of it and putting them back together. Merlin thinks it's because of the words endurance. Most words, when repeated so often, lose their meaning. Turn harmless and become ignored because it lost all of its sting. Prejudice, though, never fails to keep its poison. Never fails to make the both of them flinch. Maybe that's why they forgave each other when it comes down to it.

(The word seeps down to their marrow, but its never as bad when there's someone to share the sickness with.)

-

Merlin visits Arthur in the spring. He is still banned from the grounds and Uther is still the Bloody King of Camelot. Yet it is late and Merlin reasons, like he always reasons, that it will all be OK. That it has to be. So he visits him in the late of night, when the air is crisp with the slightest of chill. Arthur's bedchambers are just like he remembers them, slightly messy, terribly royal, and completely, one hundred percent prat worthy. It feels like coming home and when he finds Arthur awake and sitting at the table, looking almost like he expected this, well, then, everything will be OK.

(Arthur looks heartbroken that entire night, but his touch is loving and tender. The inside of his wrist, the corner of his lips, the skin above his heart, his pulse point.)

-

"Are you certain he'll want you back?" Morgana is cruel on the best of her days, but Merlin can never find it in himself to mind. "When he's king, I mean. All that blood pumping with what he was raised to hate. How could he ever allow someone like you to guide and aid the crown?" Her smile is twisted and her eyes milky with the sight of some far away place. "Because he is Arthur and he shall be the greatest king ever born. He'll take us both back." Merlin's voice doesn't hesitate with uncertainty and Morgana relaxes for a fraction of a second. "And if he doesn't?" Merlin shrugs, uncaring of such a thought, though he thinks he knows what would happen.

_(And: Again.)_


End file.
